Finally, Some Super’s Love!

I thought it about time that I actually run a non-scheduled game before my holidays were over. I have been entirely slack these holidays and been enjoying time with my wife and dealing with various things over the time between mid December and now. Tuesday next week I am heading back to work so I thought I better have a game of the non-Pathfinder/Traveller/Lords of Gossamer and Shadow which will all be starting off again soon. Pathfinder is already under way.I have been getting all OSR recently and so I decided it was time to run my Super Squadron game as a one off game just for some fun. I tried to get a game going just on the quiet with no event planned a week ago and only got one player interested. I also came down with a cold/flu so I called it off and offered it up again with the use of an event for last (Wednesday night). The massive response shocked me a little! I had to put a halt to people playing once I had eight people already signed up! Wow, that was the best response I have ever had to a game.I wanted to set the game up so that the players had no idea of one another or their powers and I decided I was going to have them all start very near some action. Of course, being the good supers that they are they would leap to assist. To do this I spend a good deal of time while I am at work creating random super heroes at work using the Super Squadron rules. I realise why I loved this system as I build these characters. There is such a good variety of powers and it is really fun building random characters up from nothing. Even some self developed (think Batman) characters with too few powers and a couple of buffs make some of the most interesting characters.

Supers rock!

The preparation for the actual game I leave until yesterday which may have been a little late as I am busy preparing for the old 40th birthday this weekend! I talk about it with the wife to fashion up a plot and make up some mooks, and a hierarchy of three super villains. So I have a cast of the blue shirts (thugs with Uzi’s), the Cobra who is the gang leader producing the muscle. The Cobra has the ability to control emotions (and hence pretty well control heroes) as well as the ability to mimic heroes abilities. The muscular flunky villain is the evil Russian Soldat, a mercenary villain little heard about in this city (Copenhagen). He can fly, generate flames and fire disintegration beams. He is the villain that blows up a super hero organisation R&D lab looking for a device that enhances powers for a time that could be harnessed to open a permanent gate to a dangerous dimension.The mastermind is our supers villainess the Enchantress. She is a shape changer with many different abilities including teleportation and a mystic sense. her life is ruled by spirits, supernatural powers and runes and she has decided to open up a permanent dimensional gate to the realms from which her spirits come from and allow them to take over this world and make her their queen. To do this she commissions a hero to create a distraction large enough to cause the regular high powered and experienced heroes to leave the planet. Doing so she puts into place her plan to have Soldat grab the device, come in and grab it from him and then disappear to her lair to put in place her plan.So, there you have it. The basic plot fleshed out I get a map and get ready for the game with the players. The role call of heroes looks something like:

The pile of poo

The Vortex: A dimension dooring, teleporting superhero with too little energy to be useful in an extracted conflict. Run by +Matt Guyder The Vortex got quickly re nicknamed the Dangler when he failed his teleport role and ended up dangling from the guttering of a building. Heroically though he did rid the world of the Cobra by opening up a dimensional gate to a hell dimension below the super villain causing him to fall in (not having flight sucks for a super!)

The Fun Guy: A mushroom farmer (run by +Tren C by day and a manipulator of illusions (normally after eating a few mushrooms!) became an instant favourite as he caused a pair of the thugs to believe that 5 ton of poo fell out of the sky. The thugs believed the illusion and hence ended up drowning in the poo…

+Kristin Milton‘s character (she did tell me the name and I am a bad GM. Sorry Kristin) had the great ability to shrug off a lot of damage as well as control the electrical forces around her. She spent a good amount of time in the game staying out of the danger zone (wisely) but she did finally bring down Soldat as he tried to get to his rendezvou with the aid of a live cable.

Lumens run by +Neal Costello is a super hero that specialises in energy beam attacks but he does have one major problem. He sucks at shooting stuff. Much of the night was spent with him missing attacks so badly that the “Sorry!” became a bit of his characters catch phrase. He did manage to stop the device the villains were after from shattering on the ground when it was dropped by Soldat.

Shaft run by +Steve K was a self developed bow expert. He got into great tactical location and was very useful through the battle. He missed a couple of important shots and scored a couple but was influential in making sure that Soldat did not get away!

Chiroptera played by +Clare Law was a character that had swift movement and a set of bat wings. In her secret identity she is a Doctor and played a roving game of helping people out which was really quite good. She also scouted out the destroyed building and spotted Soldat and what he was up to first too.

The Weedkiller played by +James Austin was his first run in a super hero game. I think James largely plays sci-fi games but last night he played the role of a force fielded alien with traits that made him much like a rose of all things! He took out a good deal of the blue shirts and also had the ignominious honour of being the only super hero suffer damage last night! Still, James enjoyed the game and may play again in the future.

Now, before I introduce the final character I will detail what happened at the end when the Enchantress showed up as +Clare Law lost audio in a glich so wanted to know what happened at this point. The Enchantress showed up and took a hold of the device as Kristin’s character almost had it in her grasp. Having several actions in around the super villainess gloated and told them all that they would always be defeated by better planning. She then went to teleport to her home base a little less than a kilometre away. Unfortunately she threw a Dangler (as it had become known) and failed her teleport roll. She made it only 100 metres of her teleport and reappeared on top of the other building. And it is at this point that I will introduce character 8.

The hell dimension portal!

Lara Fast played by +Tom Tyson is a character who can move at light speed. She used her powers to knock out three of the thugs and then transport the 5 ton of poo in a swirling vortex, shooting it like a giant poo cannon that shot down Soldat. At this point he saw the Enchantress and grabbed her, snatching her away from the device and ran her down to a desert in Africa and back again in a round thus completing the circle and successfully defending the device.

As a result the supers succeeded at protecting the device at the point of the caper. I had planned a different section of finding it and stopping the use of it but it felt good that they got in a great win! The supers got invited to return at a later stage to begin training as professional super group! It was a great game and I think everyone had a lot of fun. I had a great time and one of the players of the night +Neal Costello used to actually play with me when I ran it in high school. I had thought it was such an old fashioned game but it really did translate very well. In fact I enjoyed the night so much I may actually be running it again in the future as another one off or perhaps even a follow on for the new supers of Copenhagen.